The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1887-09-22
PERSONAL AND PECULIAR.

DIR. Douglass, one of General Grants ply
sicians is said to be in very poor circum-
stances financially.
One of the latest freaks of military science
is the training of watch dogs for sentry duty.
The French War Minister has given orders
that dogs shall be tried in connection with
advance-po duty and taught to bark at the
approach of an enemy or stranger. Dogs
are also to be used as scouts; and il they
prove useful they are to be attached to all
the line regiments and stationed regularly
with the double sentries.
Viscount Doneralie is not the first noble
victim to hydrophobia that history has
known. The Duke of Richmond, then Gov
ernor-General of Canada. and very much
greater parsonage than the unfortunate Wis
count, died at a small town on the Ottawa,
OF hydrophobia, on the 2Sth of August, 1919.
Singuiarly enough, the cause was the same
as in the Niscount's case, the bite of pet
fox, but the fatal result came much more
quickly.
The reports of John Ruskin's failing mind
have revived the story of how Milais used
to visit Ruskin and his wife as a dear friend !;
how he took Mrs. Ruskin as the original of
the sad, elinging sweetheart in his famous
picture of the "Huguenot Lowers" how the
painter and his friends wife fell in love with
each other, and how John Rnskin gave her
up to Millais, and said he hoped they wonld
be very happy together.
A letter Of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who
visited England in 1S47 and was a welcome
guest at Craigenpnttock, states that Carlyle
and his wife ''live on beautiful TERMS" 1t
was left for Froude in after years to discover
incidents and publish letters which have
produced conviction in the public mind
that Carlyle's wife was wretched on account
Of the exacti0ns OF the great thinker and
writer.
Few people nowadays, IL asked who was
the first Governor of Illinois would answer
Patrick Henry, says the Chicago News Yet
this is the case. An act was passed by the
authorities of Virginia in October, 1878,
creating the county of Illinois lin the State
of Virginia. which embraced the territory
now forming the States Of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, making
probably the largest county ever organized,
exceeding the whole of Great Britain and
Ireland; and thus the great orator of the
American revolution, Patrick Henry, then
governor Of Virginia, became the first gov
ernor of Illinois.
Speaking of the late Prof. Spencer f.
Baird, the United States Fish Commissioner,
writer in the Christian Register gives
this interesting "reminiscences: prof. Baird,
in addition to his other work. was then edit
ing the scientific department Of Harper's
Monthly. He received scientific magazines
from every part of the world. They were
Systematically indexed and filed in the study,
and with stenographer at hand, he would
rapidly go from one to the other and pick out
and translate the latest items of scientific in
telligence. But what struck us at the time
as most singular was the professors habit Of
reading the New York Ledger and papers of
| that sort for his intellectual recreation. He
might sometimes be seen walking from his
house to the Smithsonian, reading story in
the Ledger on the street as he went along.
Speaking with him once on the subject, he
said that he found such light reading fur
nished him the needed contrast and relief
from his intellectual work.
While the President was receiving citizens
in the Philadelphia City Hall on Saturday.
Mrs. Lille Devereux Blake Of New York
took the opportunity to thrust into his hand
a printed protest or declaration. This docu-
ment is addressed to ''the President of the
United States, the Governors of the States,
and other Federal and State officials" and it
is signed by Miss Susan b. Anthony and the
other officers of the National Woman Suf-
frage Association. The protest of the women
is directed against that Interpretation of the
Constitution which denies the ballot to citi-
zens of their sex. 1t contains an able argu-
ment to show that this is a government OF
| the people, and that women are people. Gin
| the midst of the pomps and glories of this
| celebration" says the protest, women are
| only onlookers, volceless and unrepresented. y
1.-The recital of these facts is the summary OF
| century Of injustice. We sOlemnly and
| earnestly protest against its continuance
| and demand that hereafter the Constitution
| of these United States shall be interpreted
in accordance with the simple words in
| which it is framed"